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BIG PHYSICS, BIG QUESTIONS –

Comment: The gee-whizz war

It’s been a good week for high technology. ‘Microchips win the day’
proclaimed a headline in the Financial Times, describing how electronic
jamming of Iraqi anti-aircraft equipment played a critical role in the first
day of the Gulf War last week. ‘This is a technology war,’ says an American
general as he proudly shows off the skills of a Stealth bomber; like a computer
animation, a cube-shaped target – a building that may well have contained
scores of human beings – slowly spins across the screen then suddenly erupts
into a black cloud as a laser guided bomb drops down its ventilation shaft.

Since the early hours of last Wednesday morning, the world has been
transfixed, not by the horrors of war or the personal dramas of those swept
up in it, but by the twists and turns of what, at times, seems little more
than a glorified computer game. In a modern war, where real information
is strictly limited, technology has become the star, and the fact-hungry
media parade its triumphs

As each new weapon takes its first shot, they state ‘never before used
in combat’ to heighten the joy of seeing that it actually works. The weapons
even have evocative names; Patriot, for example, for the American missile
sent to destroy the epitome of the evil empire, the Scud. The Gulf War has
become a promotional action video for the wonders of (Western) high technology
– avidly swallowed up in classrooms across the world, as children beg to
stay in and watch ‘the war’ rather than rushing out into the playground.

The speed and precision of the weapons that have been on display is
certainly impressive to behold. And it may well prove true that, in the
end, fewer lives will be lost than if the whole conflict had been fought
with Second World War weapons. But the coalitions’s bombers are not dropping
their bombs through doors, windows and ventilation shafts just for the fun
of it. Their purpose, as always in war, is to destroy property and equipment,
and to kill and maim people. The surgical precision with which this can
now be done, thank to recent advances in microelectronics, should not be
allowed to overshadow the de-humanising aspect of it all.

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For horror there has undoubtedly been, even if we have so far been able
to see little of it from our own sitting-rooms. The uniformed PR executives
insist that the accuracy of the weapons will ensure that the bombing causes
a minimum of casualties to the civilian population. This may well be true.
But it is not the sole reason for accuracy. A well-aimed bomb does more
damage for your dollar than flattening Baghdad with the contents of a few
B-52s. And the weapons are still expensive. Each Tomahawk cruise missile
costs more than $1 million, and hundreds were used in the first few days
of the war. Each Patriot air defence missile costs about the same. The war
is costing the US about $500 million per day.

So impressed have some US politicians been by the triumphs of American
inventiveness that there has even been new enthusiasm for the Strategic
Defense Initiative. Ronald Reagan’s beleaguered programme to build a shield
against missiles in space suddenly seems more feasible now that politicians
have watched real bombing runs that appear to have been performed by Luke
Skywalker.

A high-technology conflict, such as that being played out in the Gulf,
distorts our perceptions of war in several ways. First, it dehumanises the
process of war itself, where victims and actors cannot be seen – even by
those who drop the bombs and aim the lasers. There has even been a bitter
irony in the fact that the loss of an air-crew is not apparent until the
surviving members of a squadron have returned to their base.

Secondly, the media’s need for instant images to fill television screens
gives rise to hasty – and often erroneous – evaluations of situations, described
in the technical jargon of the generals rather than the brutal reality of
the victims.

Thirdly, it tempts us, as military technology always has done, to seek
technical fixes to what are, at root, political problems. The tensions of
the Middle East will not go away, even if Saddam Hussein is bloodily defeated
– indeed, the situation could even worsen. Yet few imagine that a successful
US, having just vaunted its technical superiority, is likely to react any
more sympathetically to demands for a Middle East peace conference than
in the past.

Even in the short term, there is a risk that excessive faith in high-technology
weaponry, spurred by the early successes of the first few days of conflict,
may lead to ever-expectations. Remember that part of the reason for America’s
defeat in the Vietnam War was its failure to secure a quick military victory
that had been promised. And even US generals are now saying that winning
air supremacy may yet prove to have been the easy bit.

The horrors of the Gulf do not lie in the technology itself. Indeed,
one of the tragedies of the conflict has been the waste of technical resources
that could have been used to save and enrich lives elsewhere; think, for
example, of the number of hospitals that could be built for each Tornado
bomber lost. It is the gee-whiz euphoria, and the idea that war has been
sanitised, that we should be wary of.

When a ground attack eventually begins, and we see pictures of men burned
alive in their tanks by armour piercing missiles, will high technology still
keep its aura? And when schoolchildren realise that science and technology
are linked with that sort of carnage, will they remain enthusiastic about
studying either? A career in accountancy is al lot easier on the conscience.